Hi Folks,

Currently running MacOS 10.14 on my 2017 27" i7 iMac.

I'm contemplating an upgrade to Catalina, then immediately to Big Sur (as I understand that is a way to avoid some upgrade issues).

Presently, I'm booting from SSD via an external Thunderbolt drive.

I heard there may be a problem doing this with BIg Sur. Before taking the leap, I wanted to see if anyone here is booting external TB on similar hardware.

Thanks for any advice or suggestions you can offer.

SR

cannot verify an Intel Mac. M1 Mini 'Big Sur' boots fine from an 1TB Inland
NVMe SSD in OWC Envoy Express and a Wavlink UTE02.
(now on Monterey; 1TB Sabrent Rocket in the UTE02)

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39°36'17"N 75°44'43"W

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DemComm Records 2021 Greatest Hits
includes:
Taxman by Joe & Nancy's Rich Ice Cream Band
The Humpty Dance by The Harris-Brown Hookup
Lets Spend The Night Together by The Fang-Swalwell Gang
Díaz-Canel Is A Friend of Ours by The AOC Squad
My Old Kentucky Retirement Home by MitchMcC & The Soggy Boxer Boys
Burning Down The House by Merrick & The Goons
Back In the USSR by Bernie's Red Square Trio

Booting from externals seems to work just fine on Intel Macs -- including booting to Big Sur -- with one exception.

I've had some issues with Catalina boot vols on 2012 iMacs that seems to be related to a firmware problem. They sometimes don't see the APFS Catalina boot vol on a restart. Have not had any problem with Macs more recent than that.

I suggest that you make a clone from your present boot drive as a precaution prior to upgrading.

Later, for cloning Big Sur and beyond, see this note:
[bombich.com]

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/14/2022 01:40PM by Tiangou.

Quote
Tiangou
Later, for cloning Big Sur and beyond, see this note:
[bombich.com]

apple sure is making things hard on Bombich

Quote
hal

Quote
Tiangou
Later, for cloning Big Sur and beyond, see this note:
[bombich.com]

apple sure is making things hard on Bombich

Yea, CCC in Monterey was a total fail for me. A clean install, and CCC would only copy about 2.8GB of data. Ended up using Disk Utilities restore function.

apple sure is making things hard on Bombich

Unintentional victim of making it harder on hackers?

---

39°36'17"N 75°44'43"W

DuckDuckGo
The search engine that doesn't track you.

DemComm Records 2021 Greatest Hits
includes:
Taxman by Joe & Nancy's Rich Ice Cream Band
The Humpty Dance by The Harris-Brown Hookup
Lets Spend The Night Together by The Fang-Swalwell Gang
Díaz-Canel Is A Friend of Ours by The AOC Squad
My Old Kentucky Retirement Home by MitchMcC & The Soggy Boxer Boys
Burning Down The House by Merrick & The Goons
Back In the USSR by Bernie's Red Square Trio